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Virtues are a quintessential part of one’s personality, but moral virtues go on to outline one’s character. Moral virtues typically include Love, Care, Selflessness, Patience, Empathy, etc.
As we welcome World Empathy Day on 9th June, it’s important to decipher Empathy - it’s simply the ability to understand someone’s mind and heart, and basically stepping into others’ shoes to relate to their feelings. While the moral virtue of Empathy is an in-born blessing, it can also be cultivated and groomed with conscious efforts.
Empathy forms the backbone of one’s emotional quotient and maturity, and hence merits the highest ranking amongst moral virtues. In fact, Empathy has been deeply embedded into Aristotelian & Socratic ethics as an indispensable quality.
There is a lot for humans to learn from animals in this aspect - researchers assert that chimpanzees & elephants demonstrate the highest levels of Empathy. One may however argue that humans can take Empathy to the next level compared to animals, since we are the only species gifted with the ability to communicate and express.
What a beautiful place this planet would be if each one of us could shower others with Empathy in each of our interactions, thereby healing ourselves in the process. And there is never a better time to start this than today.
